Republicans gain control of the U.S. House and Senate yesterday after securing crucial victories in a handful of states.
Come January, the Republican party will control both the House and Senate, after party candidates secured victories in seven key midterm Senate races yesterday.
The outcome validates pre-election models that predicted Republicans would unseat at least four Democrats to take the Senate majority. Democrats needed to retain at least five seats to keep their dominant status.
Though 36 seats were up for election, the Senate’s 2015 makeup fell on a handful of the country’s most competitive races. Six previously blue states — Montana, Colorado, South Dakota, Iowa, Arkansas, West Virginia — elected Republicans and Louisiana went to a run-off.
As of 1 a.m. the GOP controls 52 Senate seats, up from 45, and thus the majority. Republicans continue to control the House of Representatives, which they have dominated since 2011. Democrats have controlled the Senate since 2007.
Midterm elections can provide a window into public satisfaction with the incumbent party, said marketing professor Hank Boyd.
“It’s a referendum on how well you’ve done to date,” Boyd said. “If people don’t like what’s happening, they can lean to the other party.”
President Obama’s approval ratings dipped to 40 percent nationally in September, according to Gallup, a casualty of national disappointment in the Democratic party’s handling of the economy and foreign affairs.
But low favorability in a president’s senior years isn’t unheard of, and the resulting mismatched government branches isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either, said public policy professor Christopher Foreman.
“We’ve seen this situation before in the last two years of many presidencies,” Foreman said. “It’s possible that you can get some legislative productivity in the last two years where the president and the Congressional leadership are of different parties.”
Foreman said one party dominating both bodies of Congress could relieve some of the gridlock, assuming they’re willing to share credit with Obama for legislative milestones.
In 1996, then-President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and a Republican Congress passed comprehensive welfare reform legislation. The Americans with Disabilities Act was also the result of collaboration between Republican President George H.W. Bush and a Democratic Congress in 1990.
“The House has been more interested in position taking — they know what they want won’t pass the Senate. They have no incentive to legislate seriously,” he said. “That may change once you have the Republicans in charge of all of Capitol Hill.”
A Republican-dominated Congress might also give both parties a chance to reevaluate their identities going into the 2016 presidential elections, Boyd said. This could serve as an incentive for legislators to make progress on divisive topics such as immigration reform.
“Suddenly the ones too far right need to get toward the center,” Boyd said. “You’re worried about a party that only speaks to wealthy white individuals in society, and that’s not going to work.”
Of course theories are just theories, and how the politics actually play out remains to be seen, Foreman said.
“It could go one way or the other,” Foreman said.
